Field Museum to return Inuit remains

Skeletal remains of 22 people were dug up from Canadian cemetery in 1928

July 19, 2010|By William Mullen, Tribune reporter

Field Museum officials have agreed to return the remains of 22 people whom a museum expedition brought to Chicago in 1928 after digging them up from an Inuit village in Canada.

Inuit leaders in Labrador two years ago learned that the museum had the skeletal remains and asked for their return, said Helen Robbins, the Field's repatriation director. The Field has helped plan for repatriation in 2011, agreeing to pay all costs.

The bones came to Chicago from a two-year expedition to gather Inuit artifacts, she said.

At one point explorers visited the Inuit community of Zoar, which had been abandoned for more than 30 years, she said. Field anthropologist William Duncan Strong dug up the skeletons from a cemetery.

"Though collecting human remains was fairly common, it wasn't common practice to go to graveyards to do so," she said. "I think (Strong) thought they might have great scientific importance, enough to overrule the unhappiness the removal might cause with the Inuits."

Human remains are valuable to modern anthropological and medical research. The Field, like other big museums, maintains a sizable collection from all over the world, she said, including 1,700 individuals from the Americas alone. When inappropriately collected, however, the Field works to return the remains.

Museum President John McCarter sounded an apologetic note in the news release.

"We are deeply saddened by this incident," McCarter said. "While Field Museum employees of today did not commit this wrong, we recognize that these actions did not comply with ethical archaeological practices, either past or current."

Labradorean official Johannes Lampe described the removal of the remains as "immoral, disrespectful and disgraceful."

"While we can't change the past, we can do the right thing now and ensure that these individuals are returned to their rightful resting place," he said in the release.